


What I See At Night

by Cloud_15_Yankira



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Advice, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Keith/Lance (Voltron), Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Relationship Advice, Scary, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Sleep Paralysis, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-05-19 18:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloud_15_Yankira/pseuds/Cloud_15_Yankira
Summary: Lance notices Keith has been having trouble sleeping at night and decides to stay with him at his house. He doesn't know about his sleep disorder and goes to Shiro asking for advice on how to help him when he's going through it.





	What I See At Night

It's dark...extremely dark. The room was almost completely pitch black. Only the light blue glow of the moon shining through the window was visible. It had to be at least midnight by the time Keith opened his eyes. He wanted to look over at his clock on the desk, but he couldn't move. At first, he thought he was just tangled in the bed sheets, as he often ended up whilst pretending he was a burrito in his sleep. But no, he could not only not move his body, but his head either. His eyes were the only thing that slowly jerked back and forth, darting around the dark room. He knew what this was. He didn't like it, but there wasn't really anything he could do about it. All he could do was wait for the time to pass. He remembered the last time this happened, he wanted to scream for Shiro to come help him, but his voice had seemingly been ripped from his throat, tugging at his vocal chords until it practically hurt to swallow. Shiro took him to a specialist about a day later to see if there was anything they could do to help him, but they only gave him meds and told him to stay calm and wait it out. It would go away soon. Everything would be normal again soon.

For a long moment, Keith swore to himself that he could hear something moving around the empty, dark room. First it moved above him on the ceiling, then under the bed, then on his pillow. The sounds seemed to tickle his ears. He followed the sound with his eyes, but even then, it wasn't enough to catch it. He'd learned to attempt telling himself in his mind that none of it was real, but it seemed impossible when it all appeared so real. He couldn't only see and hear them, but he could feel them touch him and their gusts of air blow against his face, the only thing that was ever revealed from the bed sheets. He could also feel a mass of warmth lying next to him, but his body refused to allow him to take a peek, and neither did his eyes wish to adjust to the lighting.

There was another light source illuminating the room, coming from the doorway was a tall, scrawny figure coated in black and grey standing there. The figure had no features other than long, skinny arms and fingers, one hand balanced on the golden doorknob. Keith couldn't tell where the light was actually coming from; it only seemed very heavenly. Maybe he was slowly dying in this bed. This deathbed. Was it a deathbed? Or did he want it to be? He did; he wanted to die. As he did every night, he felt like he was dying. His breath had been stolen from him; it felt like a grown man had collapsed onto his stomach and refusing to let him catch his breath. 

 

'It hurts...'

Every time his eyes came back to the figure in the doorway, it inched its way closer. All while this and the sounds around him were happening, he could feel something dripping onto his face. His first reaction was that it had rained and his apartment had a leak, but it didn't have the consistency of water. It was much thicker. He tried shifting his eyes to look up, but they could not go as far as to see what the source was. More dripped onto his cheeks and he felt it roll down to his chin and drop onto his chest and roll down his shoulders, making a moist puddle on the mattress beneath his back. He heard a soft creaking sound as the dripping ceased. The creaking became louder and sounded as if it was behind him. He kept his eyes focused on the lumps in the sheets, seeing another pair of feet, one sock off of the foot as they hung out of the covers. He was indeed sleeping next to another person, but what he didn't know was if they were real or a figment of his sleepless mind, too. 

Out of the corner of Keith's eye, he saw a long, skinny black object, very bony, rise over him and rest on his stomach, as well did the rest of a bony mass until it was clear to him that the thick sticky liquid on his face was not water, but blood. Yet it was not red, but black. It had been secreted from the mouth of a scrawny, grey creature with beady black eyes. It's body had been deformed, almost like it used to be a person but failed even at that. Its head looked too big for its small body, arms projecting out like an ape's might. Its mouth was the most horrific sight. The lower jaw looked to have been ripped from its socket and hanging down by loose grey skin, almost seeming translucent in the dark lighting. Its mouth was covered in bloody yellow sharp teeth, none of them proportional, jagged in every which way and overlapping one another. The tongue inside the creature's mouth looked like that of a chameleon, black ooze pouring from it and dripping down the hanging chin and onto the covers. Keith glanced away when he found the courage to to see the figure that was in the doorway now standing at the foot of the bed, eyes more visible and glowing a faint white. 

The humanoid's long fingers stretched out toward Keith, making him blink a few times. He tried shutting his eyes to block out the sight, but with the image still burned into his mind, he felt those cold bones sliding up against his cheek and down his neck until it reached the collar of his V-neck shirt. He could smell the stench of rotting flesh, telling by just that that the creature's mouth was inches away from his face. He refused to open his eyes, at least until the smell went away.

"Keith?" he heard a gargled voice, almost as if he was underwater. "Keith, are you okay?"

Though Keith could tell the voice calling his name was Lance beside him, the image staining his mind in front of him prevented him from hearing him correctly. Lance could tell that Keith was in distress, knowing already about his sleep problem. However, every attempt he had in the past to help him never worked; it only resulted in Keith going into an even bigger panic. Maybe showing his face to him wasn't the best option, seeing how he hallucinated the things around him. 

He remembered the first time this happened. It had been the first time he and Keith had slept in the same bed, let alone the same room, a little after they started dating. He didn't know about Keith's sleep disorder and honestly didn't think about it, nor had Keith mentioned it at all. He recalled waking up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom and seeing Keith's eyes wide open. He remembered attempting to get his attention, but he just stared. For a moment he had thought he was dead so he waved his hand in front of his face and he blinked. He was relieved to see that Keith was breathing. Though looking right at him, he didn't seem to recognize him; he looked traumatized out of his mind. Lance didn't know what to do so he tried calling Shiro, seeing how he was his older brother and he knew him the most. Shiro hadn't been surprised to hear this news. He had informed Lance that Keith had a bad issue with sleep paralysis. Lance stayed up almost all night, taking the advice Shiro had given him after asking how to help Keith through it. All Shiro had said was: "Just be with him. It doesn't even have to be something huge, just stay next to him. Without showing him your face, let him know you're there with him and that he's okay. Let him know without words that it will all be over soon." And for the following nights, he did just that, just by laying beside Keith, his body pressed to his. He was holding him right now, by his waist. Below his arms he could feel the boy's breathing very slowly rising and falling again. Every so often his heart would skip a beat, or even double one, and so would his breathing. Lance could tell he was having difficulty, so to make it easier for him, he loosened his grip. Though Keith couldn't move or speak, Lance thought he heard a small whine after he loosened his arms' grip around him. He took that as a sign to not let go, so he tightened once again, lightly pressing his lips to the nape of Keith's neck and quietly hushing him. 

Keith had enough physical consciousness now to know that his boyfriend had been lightly pecking at his neck, still his disorder refused to let him believe that, making every movement feel like needles poking at his tender skin. He was trying to cry out for help, but the tears that were leaking from the corners of his eyes would not pick up their speed. The creature that loomed over him had crawled off of the best after Lance wrapped his arms around Keith, almost as if his arms acted as a dangerous barrier which protected Keith. Maybe they were.

Slowly, Keith began to regain his senses and could finally move a little. The figures standing around him, the sounds in his ears, the feelings crawling all around him. They all seemed to stop abruptly, like he'd been woken from a nightmare. He didn't shoot up out of bed like he normally would. This time, the process was much calmer, smoother, and quieter. He felt a pang of relief hit his mind and body and he rolled over on his side, facing Lance. His eyes had stayed adjusted to the lighting in the room; he could see every detail on Lance's face as his eyes were still closed. He could tell he was still awake by the way his eyelashes twitched here and there. They fluttered open when he felt the movement in his arms and he smiled at Keith, who was cuddling himself into his chest to stay warm. He kissed his head and that was all Keith could remember from that night before falling asleep.


End file.
